Thousands pay last respects to Taunton Police Officer Troy Medeiros

The streets leading to St. Mary’s Parish Church on Broadway were eerily quiet Wednesday morning, as traffic was diverted to accommodate more than 1,000 mourners paying tribute to veteran Taunton Police Officer Troy Medeiros.

The Taunton Daily Gazette, Taunton, MA

Writer

Posted Jun. 6, 2013 at 12:01 AM
Updated Jun 6, 2013 at 6:01 AM

Posted Jun. 6, 2013 at 12:01 AM
Updated Jun 6, 2013 at 6:01 AM

TAUNTON

» Social News

The streets leading to St. Mary’s Parish Church on Broadway were eerily quiet Wednesday morning, as traffic was diverted to accommodate more than 1,000 mourners paying tribute to veteran Taunton Police Officer Troy Medeiros.

Medeiros died of lung cancer last Saturday morning in Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston after seven months of treatments for the disease. He was 50.

His casket was escorted the short distance down Washington Street from O’Keefe-Wade Funeral Home by the TPD’s honor guard and three color guard units carrying flags.

The color guard units hailed from the city’s fire department, the Bristol County Sheriff’s Office and Bridgewater State University campus police. The six honor guards acted as pallbearers.

Medeiros, who also served for years on the Zoning Board of Appeals, was remembered as a gritty, no-nonsense cop who wasn’t afraid to speak his mind, even if it meant ruffling some feathers in the process.

“Troy had no filters,” said best friend Sgt. Matthew MCcaffrey.

Medeiros, McCaffrey said, often used a gruff exterior to mask a sensitive side and compassion for others, qualities that became ever more evident in the months leading up to his death.

McCaffrey, during his Mass address, said it was “God’s way of telling him to slow down and appreciate his friends and family.” He also said Medeiros toward the end of his life experienced a renewal of spiritual faith.

Speaking clearly, but fighting to compose himself, he recalled with humor some of the foibles of the man with whom he’d been friends for nearly 40 years.

“I want to apologize on behalf of Troy for being a little late today — I thought I was working a detail,” McCaffrey, 50 said.

When he and Medeiros worked together as community police officers in the crime- and drug-plagued Fairfax Gardens housing project in the 1990’s, McCaffrey said Medeiros was the one who possessed the keen, tactical sense necessary in dealing with dangerous situations.

“I can’t tell you how many times he saved my backside,” McCaffrey said.

But he said his friend’s well-obscured soft side would occasionally become apparent.

McCaffrey recalled one occasion when Medeiros was amazed to find out that some kids on DeWert Avenue had never heard of or tasted root beer.

After telling them to get permission from their parents, which they may or may not have done, more than a dozen kids piled into two police cruisers for the trip to Henry’s Root Beer Stand on Broadway.

McCaffrey also recalled how upset Medeiros was with a woman living in the projects with her five children, who would buy drugs for herself instead of blankets for the kids.

He said Medeiros went home, collected five fairly expensive comforters and brought them back to the apartment complex — informing the woman that if he found out she had sold the comforters for drugs he would arrest her on the spot.

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But he also said Medeiros could take a joke, as when other cops called him “Flamingo legs” for his disproportionately skinny legs, and for his propensity to preen in front of a mirror.

But through their years working together, McCaffrey said, Medeiros became nothing less than “the brother I never had.”

Medeiros, despite having succumbed to lung cancer, was not a smoker and worked out regularly at the YMCA.

He was buried in St. Joseph Cemetery. H&L Bloom Bus, GATRA and Lifeline Ambulance provided a total of nine buses at no charge to transport police and their spouses to the Whittenton cemetery.

TPD Chief Edward Walsh called Medeiros a “good officer” and a “strong friend to members of the department.”

“Troy will be remembered,” Walsh said.

The chief said he appreciated that police officers from Dighton and Raynham, as well as Massachusetts state troopers, volunteered to respond to calls during the service.

Father Kevin Cook, pastor of Holy Family Parish in East Taunton, during his eulogy said Medeiros exemplified the traditional policeman’s credo for service to community.

“There is no greater love than to lay down your life for others,” Cook said.

Medeiros is survived by his wife Mary Ellen, a teacher at Taunton High School, his sons TJ, 17, and Max, 15, his mother Cynthia and his brother Cory, a Massachusetts state trooper. His late father Horace was a Taunton firefighter.

Patrolman Mark Brady played bagpipes before the casket was carried into the church, with fellow Officer Mike Williams playing drum.

Just before the procession began, four District Court judges in black robes, along with court officers and other court employees could be seen standing in silence at the corner of Pleasant and Washington streets.